Back in October of 2017 I ran across a Halloween display while visiting SeaWorld San Diego that really caught my eye. They had three ‘fish’ pumpkins on which they projected jack-o-lantern face animations synced to several songs. After a little searching online I came across the source of their display, The Singing Pumpkins. After some negotiations with a fellow Halloween enthusiast, we decided to go in together on the whole package. I’m not sure what has become of his share of the investment, but I have slowly grown and modified mine over the last few years.
The first display was simple and quick. I placed three pumpkins under our kitchen window (in a flower box), lit the area up with a red flood light, and played the videos from a projector sitting on the patio table. The second version of the display in 2018 is closer to the current display in that I moved the whole thing out onto the lawn, got rid of the flood light, and started to hide some of the magic. Many more ‘trick-or-treat’ers hung out for a song or two with this first big change or location. 2018 was also the first year that we used a mix of real and fake pumpkins. It seems that the middle animation works better on the tall skinny fake pumpkin we already had on hand while the smaller animations tend to look nice on the real pumpkins we find each year and choice not to carve.
While 2018’s setup consisted of the main pumpkins on top of a cooler covered with a black sheet (also hid the speakers), the projector and Raspberry Pi hidden under some shredded cloth decorations, and a few of the other yard pumpkins around the cooler, a few minor but effect adjustments made this year’s display more enjoyable. I was able to tweak the script that ran the video on the Raspberry Pi (well, in all honesty, I erased the micro sd card that had last year’s animation on it and had to start over, but it worked much better this year) to help control the animations if there were any requests. My son and I added much more to the static decorations around the main pumpkins, which helped bring together the whole display in general. I also utilized a cardboard box covered with the shredded cloths to hold projector and Raspberry Pi instead of just covering up the projector. This helped with keeping the projector cooler and more out of sight. I also expanded my playlist for the first time to include the songs Thunderstruck by AC/DC, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, and Neverending Story with the Stranger Things animation.
The critical components that I use are a Raspberry Pi 3 with an automated script for looped video playback that can be controlled by a wireless keyboard.
A DBPower LED projector connected to the Raspberry Pi via a HDMI cable.
And a set of Creative Inspire T12 speakers connected to the audio jack on the Raspberry Pi.
My future ambitions for this display are to connect the speakers remotely via a Bluetooth hub, contain the projector and Raspberry Pi in a more secure and protective way that would allow for multiple nights of display without tear down, and eventually build a song selection box that would allow display viewers to break the playlist cycle for a particular song (I have much more coding and electronic hardware research to do for this one).
Happy Halloween Everybody!